


It Doesn't Have To Be True

by verucasalt123



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Atheism, Canonical Character Death, Christianity, Ficlet, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-02
Updated: 2014-11-02
Packaged: 2018-02-23 14:28:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2550929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verucasalt123/pseuds/verucasalt123
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Attendance at Allison's funeral. prompt: <i>peace</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	It Doesn't Have To Be True

The whole process was just strange; juxtaposed to the events that caused it. Allison’s death had occurred in the middle of complete chaos. Here at Most Blessed Sacrament church, every word and every action was ordered. Stiles kept up because Derek was holding his hand, so he stood and sat and knelt when he was supposed to. He’d never been on the inside of a Catholic church before.

Looking around, he realized he didn’t really know much about his friends’ spiritual or religious beliefs. Stiles hadn’t been raised with religion, except for one week each summer when he’d attend Vacation Bible School with Scott at First Presbyterian over by the elementary school. Even then, he would listen to what the grownups had to say and think _I have never heard anything more ridiculous than this_ (of course, that was before the whole werewolf thing crashed into his life). Still, Stiles always memorized his Scripture verse so he could get a piece of candy at the end of the day. 

Scott accepted it all as a matter of course; his mother believed in God, and in Jesus having died for the sins of humanity, she had told him it was true, and everything she said was true in Scott’s eyes. Now they’d gotten older, he wondered if Scott still believed.

Isaac and Lydia sat together on the same pew as Stiles and Derek. Lydia was barely holding it together and Isaac was trying to keep her from shaking out of her skin right there in the middle of the service. Stiles had never talked to either of them about religion, but he knew Lydia went to that giant Methodist church on Main Street for Christmas Eve. Maybe she went more than that. 

Stiles was gonna go out on a limb and bet that Isaac’s dad hadn’t been a particularly religious guy. But here in this place where everything was done by rote, where the congregation gave responses simultaneously and everyone moved and spoke as expected, he noticed that Isaac closed his eyes and lowered his head on the occasions when “ _Let us pray_ ” was spoken by the priest. Was he just trying to look like everyone else? Or was he really praying?

Of all people, Derek was the one Stiles knew for sure who really did buy into all this. He’d told Stiles as much, on a lazy Sunday morning while they were having coffee in bed. He didn’t think it had so much to do with rule-following as some others did, but yeah, he thought God was a real thing and being a good person meant that there was an afterlife for you in Heaven where you would be reunited with lost loved ones. Derek thought he’d see his family again after he died. Stiles would never argue with him over this, never question Derek believing something that made him feel like such a thing would be possible.

It seemed like an awfully invasive question, but now Stiles really wanted to know. What did his friends really think about all this? His own mother had been cremated and her friends had arranged a secular funeral where a lady talked about nature and spirits and things Stiles didn’t really listen to because he was eleven and his mother was dead. He didn’t know the word for it then, but he was atheist, as was his father, he’d later find out when he finally did bring up the subject a couple of years later. The Sheriff was there at the church, too, of course, but he didn’t close his eyes or sing the songs or any of that. 

Chris Argent, of all people, was clearly not doing all of this for show. Yes, his family had belonged to the parish since they’d arrived in Beacon Hills but he was serious about God, and about Allison being with her mother in Heaven, this afterlife that existed outside of the earthly human plane. Stiles was pretty sure committing suicide was against the rules, but Chris seemed to think Victoria was some kind of exception. Stiles wasn’t ignorant about Christianity, he just thought it was all bullshit. But he didn’t figure being informed or not had much to do with it – people just believed what they believed. 

He’d never given a lot of thought to it, but now Stiles was thinking he might be the only atheist in the bunch of them. If he was, that was all right, and honestly, at this exact moment he was kind of grateful for it on behalf of his friends.

Allison’s father believed all his life that there was this heavenly afterlife, a reward for having believed in God and accepted Christ, and that Allison was reaping that reward right now as he was standing there engulfed in misery after having lost his sister, his wife and his daughter. If it made the people who loved and missed her feel better, then there wasn’t any harm in it at all; there couldn’t be.

While it might have been true that the words and prayers didn’t mean much to Stiles, he did know for sure that Allison’s life had been one big ball of stress and craziness and tension for at least the past couple of years. So no matter what else was true or not true, Allison was not there with them in this life anymore; she was free from everything they had to deal with all the time, which meant for her friends and family, there was a measure of peace. It was the very least Allison deserved after all she’d been through, and if thinking the girl was in Heaven brought peace to those who loved her, Stiles wouldn’t begrudge anyone that.


End file.
